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Monday, December 17, 2007

WTC 1 hit -- Marcus Icke

What Hit WTC1?

Dimensional Analysis Of The “Flight 11” Aircraft Seen In The “Fireman’s Video”

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Introduction


In this article which should be considered an update for “Flight 11 Unveiled – The X-11 Drone” we will analyse captured frames from the famous “Fireman’s Video” in conjunction with computer simulations of the “Flight 11” aircraft’s approach to WTC1 in order to ascertain the basic dimensions and shape of the aircraft. Some of the images shown on this site have been enhanced to bring out as much detail from them as possible. While doing so I have been careful not to add or remove anything from them. Throughout the analysis and presentation I have tried to remain as objective as possible. Most of the visual exercises were carried out more than once and often used varying methodology in their conception and execution. I have assumed that this “Fireman’s Video” was recorded by Jules Naudet (below left) and that it has been transferred to DVD format from the original tape.

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Picture Quality Issues

Many sceptics have criticised the “Flight 11” aircraft for being too “blurry” and have claimed that there is something wrong with the aircraft and / or there is something wrong with the video recording itself. It is true that the “Flight 11” aircraft is blurry, but having watched the 911 DVD from start to finish I have come to the conclusion that everything in the video is “blurry”, not just the “Flight 11” aircraft. In essence, the quality of the video is satisfactory, but not brilliant and it “blurs” everything it records to the same degree.

When people talk of “blurriness” or use some other abstract criticism of the video what they are really referring to is image resolution, motion blur, native blur, compression artefacts, digital noise, digital artefacts , post-production scan-interpolation, etc and other effects that degrade the quality of the picture. Coincidentally, the camera that was used for this film-footage would not be considered suitable for any type of serious documentary work:

An overview of the relevant video quality issues are discussed below using visual examples from the “Fireman’s Video”.

Image Resolution

The size of the “Flight 11” aircraft as seen in the “Fireman’s Video” is contained on average in a grid of approximately 20 pixels by 20 pixels. In an area of 400 square pixels there is not sufficient visual information to positively identify the object that is being represented by those 400 square pixels, especially when you consider other video effects that degrade the quality of the image.

In the picture below I’ve paired together two proportionately sized images of the WTC1 tower from the “Fireman’s Video”. The wide angle low resolution image is on top and a fully zoomed in high resolution equivalent image is on the bottom:

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In the high resolution image there is a box like structure perched on the northern tip of the WTC1 tower which I’ve marked in a black circle. Other higher resolution images taken from different angles with different video cameras confirm the presence of this structure on the WTC1 tower top that was probably some kind of radio communication device:

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In our low resolution image the box shaped structure has been reduced to what looks like a large, black, low contrast cloud hanging over the corner of the tower. This effect is a kind of optical illusion because there is insufficient visual information to positively identify the structure. To make matters worse over-exposure of the frame has caused “blooming” of the highlighted areas (areas of the image where objects in the field of view are reflecting excessive amounts of sunlight directly at the camera. Blooming will be discussed later) which not only removes even more visual information from those areas, it makes the reflecting surface look larger than it actually was in reality.

Blur Part 1 - Radial Blur

The “Fireman’s Video” seems to have a native blur that is equivalent to a radius of about 1 and a half pixels. This means that in theory if we were to focus the image with a blur radius of 1 and a half pixels using image enhancement software then we could sharpen the image to effectively remove that native blur. An ingenious software program called “FocusMagic” that can do just this.

The picture below shows two identical captured frames from the “Fireman’s Video” extracted from the original DVD at their native resolution. The entire image on the top has been focused using “FocusMagic” with a blur radius set at of 1 and a half pixels while the image below remains unprocessed:

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The enhanced image looks much sharper, not only across the shape of the “Flight 11” aircraft, but across the entire field of view, especially over the brown building on the right of the frame. By definition this proves that the “Flight 11” aircraft was no more “blurry” than its surrounds. It also shows us that there is a sufficient amount of detail in the video for effective visual enhancement.

Blur Part 2 - Motion Blur

As Jules Naudet swung his camera to the left to capture the last moments of the “Flight 11” aircraft everything the video camera recorded was subject to motion blur. This is not the same as ordinary “blur” which is normally the result of the subject being out of focus or any “blur” produced by the video recording process.

In the picture below the right hand frame shows a capture taken when the video camera was at rest, and on the left is a frame captured when the video camera was in the process of turning sharply to the left. Notice that in the left hand image the WTC1 mast, the illuminated side of the WTC1 tower and the “Flight 11” aircraft itself all appear to be horizontally “stretched” and lacking in contrast. By comparison the stationary image on the right is clear and sharp. These are the effects of motion blur, in this case horizontal motion blur:

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As most of the appearance of the “Flight 11” aircraft was recorded when the camera was in motion you can see why the image quality is not as good as it could have been. Not only is it suffering from the native blur induced by the video camera itself, it now has additional motion blur added on top of that. Both of these effects are in a sense obscuring detail in the image, but a great deal of that detail can be recovered with image enhancement software.

Incidentally, the motion blur began as soon as the camera started turning to the left and long before the “Flight 11” aircraft even appeared in the camera’s field of view. Below left is an image of a street lamp-post and its respective shadow cast on the background building which was captured when the video camera was in motion. On the right we have the same structure and its shadow recorded just before the camera began turning to the left:

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Just as in the previous example the image that was recorded when the camera was in motion has weaker contrast and suffers from horizontal motion blur.

To end this blur sub-section I’ve enhanced an entire frame from the “Fireman’s Video”. You may recognise it because it’s the same frame I used for the introduction picture at the top of this article. In this example the image on top has been heavily processed over entire frame to remove radial blur and motion blur using “FocusMagic” and I’ve lightened the darker areas to make it look much closer to what an observer would have seen had he or she been watching the event from the same place as the cameraman:

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Blooming

Blooming is caused by localised over-exposure of the video frame and it removes visual information from the picture that can not be recovered. In the background of the image below I’ve marked out a parked car and it’s surrounds in a red rectangle. The camera is in shadow and most of the shot was filmed in a shadowy area. The video camera’s aperture control would have been set to automatic and therefore it would have been adjusting itself to correctly expose the image based on the average amount of light coming into the camera’s lens. As most of the shot has been recorded shadow, the sun lit background has been over-exposed resulting in the blooming of these over-exposed areas, which in this case is the car and its surrounds. Consequently we can make out very little detail in this part of the image:

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Compression Artefacts

Compression artefacts are the visual side effects of using compression technology to reduce the file size of a video recording. They typically manifest as block-like echoes over boundaries of high contrast and become increasingly more noticeable as the amount of compression is increased. In the case of the “Fireman’s Video” additional artefacts would have been introduced into the video during conversion to the MPG2 format for DVD release.

The image below has been enhanced to highlight these compression artefacts around areas of sharp contrast. Notice vertical ripples to the right of the WTC1 mast and a “chequered” effect on the WTC1 tower, the brown building to the right and on the impact event on the north face of the tower:

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Compression engines introduce other visual aberrations into video recordings. In our next comparison image the CG Boeing 767-200 on the right has been deliberately compressed to show the visual side effects of compression. You can just make out a faint cloud of artefacts around the airframe and that some of the darker areas have become bloated and accentuated, but what stands out the most is that a lot of colour detail has been removed from the image of the airframe. It seems that a blue cast has covered the lighter areas, almost as if the background had bled into the silhouette of the airframe washing out the colour, distorting its outline and leaving it a darkened monochromatic blue that looks different from the original image:

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Noise

In the “Fireman’s Video” you can see a lot of what looks like noise in the sky. I’ve marked the densest patch with red arrows but the whole image is affected to a greater extent:

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Conclusion To Picture Quality Issues

When we consider the effects of blooming, compression artefacts, noise, blur, image resolution etc, it is technically correct to state that the “Flight 11” aircraft is “blurry” because this is exactly how we would expect a camera of this quality (Jules Naudet’s camera is shown below) to render such any object in the frame.

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All of these video effects will change the way the “Flight 11” aircraft appears to the viewer in the video, but they don’t make it any less real than it actually was (assuming the video is genuine). It is possible with careful visual enhancement to bring out more detail from any given image. Under the circumstances the “Flight 11” aircraft is sufficiently sharp to perform an analysis of it without enhancement, especially when the WTC1 tower is directly behind the “Flight 11” aircraft:

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Computer Simulation Of An American Airlines Boeing 767-200 Strike At WTC1

In order to analyse the “Flight 11” aircraft we need something to gauge its dimensions by. The official story tells us that WTC1 was hit by a hijacked American Airlines Boeing 767-200. If we were to use an identical camera used by Jules Naudet and could position a Boeing 767-200 at precisely the same bearing, distance, aircraft attitude and in the same meteorological conditions as the “Flight 11” aircraft seen in the “Fireman’s Video then it would be possible to do a direct comparison between the re-created CG video and the authentic video.

As I do not have the time or resources to re-create this event in real life using Jules Naudet’s video camera and a real Boeing 767-200 I have chosen to simulate the scenario in Microsoft's “Flight Simulator 2004 - A Century Of Flight” using a high quality iFDG 767-200 freeware add-on and a custom made patch that restores the former World Trade Centre Complex to the native flight simulator scenery.

I checked the WTC patch with the iFDG 767-200 to real world dimensions. The simulated scenery and aircraft add-ons were strikingly accurate.

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Next I had to position the virtual camera precisely at precisely the point where Jules Naudet was filming when the aircraft struck. I achieved this with a street map of lower Manhattan and knowing that the Jules Naudet was in Canal Street I positioned the virtual camera respectively and made fine adjustments to the position so that zoomed in shots of the tower just after it had been hit by the “Flight 11” aircraft matched as closely as possible to what could be seen from the simulated view point at the same zoom setting.

During the creation of this article I did my own work and some research in to the “Flight 11” aircraft’s flight path, attitude and the viewing angle of the camera Jules Naudet used to record the WTC1 impact.

Flight Path and Attitude datums:

Flight path - Descent path approximately 15 degrees calculated by Professor A. K. Dewdney, confirmed by the author…

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…and then backed up by the 911 Omission:

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Aircraft pitch - Negative at approximately 15 degrees. Deduced by the author from the “Fireman’s Video”:

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Aircraft assumed to be heading directly at WTC1 hitting at a perpendicular angle to the North face of the tower.

This information is sourced from FEMA, NIST and MIT (see below):.

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Camera Viewing Angles:

If positioned at the WTC1 gash looking straight out, the camera position from the observer would be:

Declination angle of approximately 19 degrees.

Relative bearing from WTC1 North face of approximately 14 degrees positive from perpendicular:

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For the purposes of this exercise I have chosen the following CG Boeing 767-200 attitude datums:

CG Boeing 767-200 attitude datums:

Pitch – Approximately 15 degrees negative:

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Yaw - 0 degrees.

Bank - 24 degrees port approximately – deduced from WTC1 gash photographs:

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Altitude - Visually matched to the respective “Flight 11” aircraft extracted from the Naudet footage.

With the camera positioned as accurately as possible and the aircraft position / attitude adjusted to match the “Flight 11” aircraft as seen in the “Fireman’s Video” using “Flight Simulator 2004 - A Century Of Flight” we can re-create an image of what Jules Naudet’s camera should have recorded on 911 if the WTC1 tower had been hit by a Boeing 767-200.

But before we do this we’ll take a look at a frame of the “Flight 11” aircraft on its own and see what we can learn from the image without the aid of comparative CG analysis.

The “Flight 11” Aircraft – A Basic Analysis

What we have here, recorded in the “Fireman’s Video”, is most definitely an aircraft in the way most people would know an aircraft. You can clearly see the black tail fin, the black port side of the fuselage, the underside of the port wing, the underside of the port elevator and the nose tip. If you look more closely the port wing root is just visible.

The annotated airframe of the “Flight 11” aircraft shown below has been rotated 45 degrees to the right to put the airframe in an attitude that should make it easier for the reader to perceive:

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The starboard side of the airframe is something of a mystery. The starboard wing is obscured by the fuselage, but where the end half of where the starboard wing should be, there is a large dark “blob” which looks like it is almost as wide as the fuselage itself. This eliminates any possibility of the “blob” being the starboard engine nacelle, it can’t be because it’s much too large, in the wrong place and the wrong colour. The object in question could be a visual blend of elements of the outer half of the starboard wing with some other kind of device attached to that wing, or mounted on the relatively darker starboard side of the fuselage.

In the next section we’ll look at different frames of the “Flight 11” aircraft from the “Fireman’s Video” and see how they size up next to our CG Boeing 767-200 and the CG WTC1 tower. This will allow us to build up a basic picture of the “Flight 11” aircraft using comparative CG analysis. All of my CG images have been matched to the original “Fireman’s Video” footage in terms of environmental conditions, blur, compression artefacts and other video aberrations native to the video camera so as to allow for as an effective visual analysis as is possible.

Approximation Of The “Flight 11” Aircraft’s Airframe Dimensions

Fuselage Length

The image below shows the CG Boeing 767-200 as close to the CG WTC1 tower as possible (right) with the same attitude as the “Flight 11” aircraft (left):

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Straight away we can see that the “Flight 11” aircraft is significantly shorter than a Boeing 767-200, in fact by a factor of about 25%. This visual analysis gives the “Flight 11” aircraft’s fuselage length at approximately 36 meters compared to the Boeing 767-200’s fuselage length of precisely 48.51 meters.

Airframe Reflectivity

Out of all the frames that were captured and analysed for this article I never found anything that looked remotely like engine nacelles on the “Flight 11” aircrafts wings despite the suns position at approximately 24 degrees above the horizon and approximately 15 degrees to the left and behind of aircraft’s lateral axis that would have provided ample illumination for both engines, assuming the aircraft was indeed a Boeing 767-200:

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We should note that the engines and airframe of this Boeing 767-200 aircraft were finished with a reflective black and metallic material respectively and that these finishes should have been more than adequate to reflect a sufficient quantity of light to have been registered by Jules Naudet’s video camera:

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Wing Sweep-back Angle

The “Flight 11” aircraft has a different wing sweep back angle to a Boeing 767-200. The wings on the “Flight 11” aircraft almost perpendicular to the airframe by comparison. The sweep back angle on the Boeing 767-200 is 31.50 degrees as can be seen in the CG Boeing 767-200 in the image pair below. In this particular pair I’ve pasted the CG Boeing 767-200 back into the original frame from the “Fireman’s Video”:

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With this wing sweep back problem in mind we can eliminate most commercial aircraft including all of the Boeing and Airbus types in service at the time of the 911 attacks.

Wing Span

Not only is the wing sweep-back angle less than it should be on the “Flight 11” aircraft, the wing span appears to be significantly shorter than that of a Boeing 767-200 (below), though this point is speculative as the wing sweep-back angle and wing dihedral angle could produce the illusion of a bigger or smaller wing span compared to the CG Boeing 767-200.

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This “Flight 11” aircraft could easily be a Boeing 737-NG or similarly proportioned aircraft if it weren’t for the incorrect wing sweep back angle. The relatively small size of the “Flight 11” aircraft might go some way to explain why we don’t see any engines on the wings. Being sized in proportion to the rest of the airframe they would have been too small to show up on the video.

To conclude this section we can say with certainty that the “Flight 11” aircraft’s airframe is significantly smaller that that of a Boeing 767-200 in practically every respect. It has a shorter fuselage, a smaller wing span and a slimmer fuselage. There is some evidence to suggest that the wings of the “Flight11” aircraft were mounted to the top of the fuselage and not on the bottom. Most modern commercial passenger jets like the Boeing and Airbus types have the wings attached to the bottom of the fuselage, not on the top.

The Question Of Video Authenticity

Some sceptical members of the 911 research community have stated that:

“The object seen in the Fireman’s Video is a shapeless blob and therefore it can’t be an aeroplane of any sort.”

This is untrue as demonstrated by the previous ”The Flight 11 Aircraft – A Basic Analysis” section which identifies key airframe elements.

“The aircraft seen in the Fireman’s video does not conform to the Laws of Perspective and therefore the

Flight 11 aircraft can not be an aeroplane of any sort or the video is not genuine.”

Typically people that make this kind of sweeping statement can’t define perspective and probably have never objectively studied the WTC1 strike from the “Fireman’s Video” in its entirety. Thus this comment is a speculative one that can easily be disproven as is graphically demonstrated below using points 1 and 2 as simple definitions of perspective that were synthesised from the “Oxford Illustrated Dictionary” for the purpose of this analysis.

1 – “Increased distance from the viewer or camera produces an apparent decrease in the objects size.”

When the “Flight 11” aircraft disappeared inside the WTC1 tower it was far smaller than when it first appeared in the camera’s field of view. Despite reducing in size the Flight 11” aircraft held its shape throughout the WTC1 strike sequence:

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2 – “Apparent compacting of linear spaced objects with increased viewing distance.”

As the “Flight 11” aircraft flies away from the camera toward the WTC1 tower the apparent distance between each consecutive captured image of the aircraft taken at linear time intervals appears to decrease the further and further away it flies away from the camera (see below).

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This scenario is analogous an observer watching cars driving down a freeway. As the cars get further and further away from the observer they appear to get relatively smaller and smaller and the apparent distance each car gets smaller and smaller, but each individual car maintains its apparent shape as it travels away from the camera.

So in terms of perspective the “Flight 11” aircraft as it appears in the “Fireman’s Video” conforms to the Laws of Perspective just like any other moving object in an environment. This could be considered a sign of authenticity or just a sign that the video is a well made fake. If this video is fake then why didn’t the fakers use the image of a Boeing 767-200 instead of some other type of aircraft that is visibly smaller than a Boeing 767-200?

The matter of authenticity is hotly disputed, but having studied the DVD version of this video I can see no obvious signs of forgery or manipulation. This does not prove that the video has not been forged or manipulated. If the video is fake, then it is a very well made fake, and in many respects. In my view it is up to the reader to make up their own minds over the question of authenticity.

Conclusion

The “Fireman’s Video” does not provide any video evidence for a Boeing 767-200 strike at Tower 1 of the former World Trade Centre Complex in New York on the morning of September 11th 2001. As demonstrated herein images of a simulated Boeing 767-200 strike at the WTC1 tower compared to images of the “Flight 11” aircraft strike at WTC1 as seen in the “Fireman’s Video” shows little or no similarity between the “Flight 11” aircraft and the simulated Boeing 767-200. If the “Flight 11” aircraft had been a Boeing 767-200 then it should have appeared as just that in the “Fireman’s Video”.

Whatever hit WTC1 was no Boeing 767-200, it was a much smaller non-commercial aircraft of unknown origin that functioned more like a missile than a passenger jet.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why Can’t We See The Nose Section Of The “Flight 11” Aircraft?

Well actually you can see the nose of the “Flight 11” aircraft as illustrated in the graphic below:

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The viewer sees proportionally less the nose section because of the camera viewing angle and the attitude of the “Flight 11” aircraft that gives the viewer the illusion that the nose section of the airframe is small or absent (compare distance B to distance A in the graphic below):

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Here’s a greatly exaggerated example of this optical illusion using an Airbus A340. Notice how the front half of the fuselage (A) seems to be disproportionately longer than the rear half of the fuselage (B), yet in the plan view (inset) the distances A and B are practically identical:

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Poor quality versions of the video eliminate the smaller details will add to this optical illusion but in the high quality region 1 NTSC DVD version the nose section is largely self-evident throughout the entire sequence although it appears to be very small or altogether absent. The relative size and appearance of the nose section is dependant on other factors like the compression artefacts, changes in viewing angle and any other aberrations in the video recording process like blooming or noise as previously mentioned.

Here’s another way to prove that there was a significant amount of fuselage ahead of the wings. Consider frames 1 and 2 below which show the shadow cast by the fuselage of the “Flight 11” aircraft as its passes through the towers facade:

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Fuselage contact occurs just before frame 1 and a significant amount of the fuselage has penetrated the façade by frame 2, yet in both frames we can clearly see the port wing. This proves that there was a significant portion of fuselage ahead of the wings. The wings vanish during the flash frame (right of frame 2) never to re-appear.

It would seem that the wings on the “Flight 11” aircraft are in roughly in the place we would expect them to be for a normal aeroplane. Below is an enlargement of frame 1, except this time I’ve marked the point where the fuselage contacts the façade with a red line, thereby allowing us to obtain a rough visual estimate of the relative position of the wings on the fuselage:

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Why Can’t We See Any Engines On The “Flight 11” Aircraft?

The reason we can’t see any engines on the “Flight 11” aircraft is because it probably didn’t have any, or because they were so much smaller than the Boeing 767-200 engines that they weren’t recorded by Jules Naudet’s video camera.

In the earlier sections of the video that had favourable camera viewing angles we should have been able to identify something that looked like, or inferred, the presence of wing mounted engines on the airframe that would be consistent in size and positioning with the engines on the Boeing 767-200, but we didn’t:

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The “Flight 11” Aircraft Looks Like A “Blob” And Therefore It’s Not An Aeroplane!

It has been said that the “Flight 11” aircraft recorded by Jules Naudet’s video camera is nothing more than a “blob” and therefore it can not be an aircraft of any kind, but this is precisely how Jules Naudet’s mediocre quality video camera would record an object such as the “Flight 11” aircraft given the meteorological conditions on 911, the camera viewing angle and the attitude of the “Flight 11” aircraft.

The “Flight 11” aircraft is only rendered by a small amount of pixels and is further subject to native blur, compression artefacts, digital noise and other degrading effects of the video recording process.

To illustrate this point consider the following image pair. On the left is the picture of an American Airlines Boeing 767-200 taken from a documentary about the 911 atrocities and on the right is the identical picture with the resolution dropped to the same level as the “Fireman’s Video” with the correct amount of native blur and compression artefacts added:

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In the image on the right all of the aircrafts aerofoils have apparently vanished as have both its engines. It bears practically no resemblance to the original image leaving the viewer guessing or using their imagination to work out what the “blob” actually was had it been recorded at a higher resolution.

This simulated example above of the degrading effects of the video recording process are directly applicable to the “Flight 11” aircraft seen in the “Fireman’s video” and therefore the argument that because the “Flight 11” aircraft appears to be nothing more than a “blob” in the “Fireman’s Video” it can not be an aircraft of any kind is technically incorrect.

Version 1.3 - August 2006.

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